Herb Sutter:

C is a poster child for why it's essential to keep those people who know a thing can't be done from bothering the people who are doing it.

Paul Ford:

When I tell people what we are doing, they want to hear about the room where you produce. I tell them that there is a lot of paperwork. That they take your picture and look at your license. Then they walk you back to the room. You are handed a list of instructions and some stickers and a plastic cup. The cup has a forest-green lid.

In the room is a VCR. No one sets a clock, but there is a sense of time passing. You get to work and try not to think about things.

James Collins, to Mark Zuckerberg:

In this so-called blind adoption, the adoptive parents believe the child is their own. It's complicated.

Paul Ford, on 21 September:

A few days ago we packed everything and went to the hospital. And a few hours after we arrived the clock -- our clock -- reset from 3.5 billion to zero.

Hello little girl. And two minutes later: Hello little boy.

Will Wilkinson:

As an undergrad I was an art major. Frankly, few of my fellow art majors were talented enough to make a living at it, even after four (or more!) years of training. Sure they loved art, but in the immortal words of Tina Turner, "What's love got to do with it?" "Find what you love and never settle for less" is an excellent recipe for frustration and poverty. "Reconcile yourself to the limits of your talent and temperament and find the most satisfactory compromise between what you love to do and what you need to do to feed your children" is rather less stirring, but it's much better advice.

Steve Jobs' gorgeous gadgets have no doubt helped some do what they love, and better. But mostly iStuff is so beloved because it offers such attractively pleasant diversion from the disappointment of having settled of necessity on lives we do not thoroughly love. To whom is watching Iron Man 2 on an iPad alone not settling?

Jonah Lehrer:

Curiosity is a fragile thing. It's the not knowing -- that tang of doubt and possibility -- that keeps us playing with the world, eager to figure out how it works.

Steven M. Johnson, on Steven M. Johnson, once described as "R. Crumb meets Buckminster Fuller":

Curious images have filled my mind during weekends and odd free moments. ... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Jan Chipchase:

Three things I've learned:

Everyone has a story to tell, most people don't have someone to listen.

Never ask the question if you're not willing to listen to, and act upon the answer.

Avoid drunks with guns.

Roger Scruton:

Things become sacred when sacrifices on behalf of the community have been distilled in them ... And sacred things are invitations to sacrifice ... The decline of religion has deprived us of sacred things. But it has not deprived us of the need for them.

Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, on a world of ubiquitous drones:

Is this the world we want to live in? Because we're creating it.

Jad Abumrad, on radio:

The only way to really loosen the reins a little bit is to say to yourself, 'Let's do an experiment that makes me actually deeply nervous, because it could be bad.' I'm prepared to suck for awhile.

Neal Stephenson:

Space exploration has always had its detractors. To complain about its demise is to expose oneself to attack from those who have no sympathy that an affluent, middle-aged white American has not lived to see his boyhood fantasies fulfilled.

Still, I worry that our inability to match the achievements of the 1960s space program might be symptomatic of a general failure of our society to get big things done.

A large technology company or lab might employ hundreds or thousands of persons, each of whom can address only a thin slice of the overall problem. Communication among them can become a mare's nest of email threads and Powerpoints.

Coordinating their efforts through a command-and-control management system is a little like trying to run a modern economy out of a Politburo.

Brian Eno:

The difficulty of always feeling that you ought to be doing something is that you tend to undervalue the times when you're apparently doing nothing, and those are very important times. It's the equivalent of the dream time, in your daily life, times when things get sorted out and reshuffled. If you're constantly awake work-wise you don't allow that to happen.

Michiru Hoshino:

Oh! I feel it. I feel the cosmos!

As is often the case in today's world, snippets of a story are presented with less than complete information and without much context. We are awash in information without context, willful deceptions disguised as opinions, and bombastic coverage of news and events that lacks the nuance and perspective it deserves. An innocuous statement can take on a different meaning without the full context of how and where and when it was said. It's an imperfect art, this reporting business. It's not that you shouldn't believe what you see or read. What is shown and printed is often the truth. But it's only part of the story. The key, for both media and consumer, is to always be aware of that.

Avaya is making it easier for the content/context of any interaction on any channel to be seamlessly transferred to another.

In fining stations for fleeting expletives the FCC has claimed that certain words are in-and-of-themselves indecent without regard to context, such that the f-word immediately and unambiguously evokes its most offensive sexual context when uttered. Broadcasters argue otherwise, noting that the context of fleeting expletives is important in judging indecency, noting that most of the time the words are not intended to refer at all to sexual or excretory function.

Things targeted to a group of friends that have the larger context but are available to the general public without that context can be skewed to a strange point of view.

We hear a lot lately about the aging of the Baby Boom generation, usually in the context of the strain all those old boomers are putting on Social Security and Medicare. But the rapid aging of the American population is good news for lots of industries, including those who make wheelchairs, bifocals and hearing aids. Consumer product strategy (CPS) professionals must leverage context to create and deliver product experiences that enhance the overall perceived value of a product. Men want context for what they buy. That information is now available. It's not, 'I'm wearing these j... [ Read More (0.4k in body) ]

Ashar Aziz:

The world is in this state of persistent insecurity.

The Economist:

You do not need to look like an animal in order to behave like one.

Dave Johns:

The mother who blames her son's boozebag friends for his wild behavior must face up to the fact that he prefers the fast crowd in the first place.

Bill Saporito:

They are feasting on small and medium-size businesses like wolves on lambs.

Christopher S. Stewart:

The sting was executed flawlessly, with everyone pouncing at once.

Brian Stelter:

Not too long ago, theorists fretted that the Internet was a place where anonymity thrived. Now, it seems, it is the place where anonymity dies.

Sascha Meinrath:

We're going to build a separate infrastructure where the technology is nearly impossible to shut down, to control, to surveil.

James McGirk:

The real currency of the online world is attention. With the proper keywords, information is taken up into automatic readers belonging to some very interesting entities, to the point where there can be real world consequences.

Joseph C. Massino:

You never talk in a club, you never talk in a car, you never talk on a cellphone, you never talk on a phone, you never talk in your house.

Sandy Pentland:

Phones can know.

Nick Bilton:

Technology also has a way of advancing far ahead of the law.

Sandra Silva, on her cybercoyote:

It's like a guide through the desert.

Randall Munroe:

What's more important? Games, or mosquito nets and medicine for kids?

Billy Hoffman:

There is nothing more important than how you spend your time.

Caterina Fake:

Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on.

Mary Meeker, Scott Devitt, and Liang Wu:

Do humans want everything to be like a game?

Sarah Baxter and Michael Smith:

Obama asked: "What's the endgame?" and did not receive a convincing answer.

John Givings:

Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.

xkcd: Charity

An exchange:

Andrew Keen: So why are you so popular?

Seth Godin: I notice things.

Sue Gardner:

Everyone brings their crumb of information to the table.

@missrftc:

The "everything bagel" really only has like three things.

Just what I want for breakfast.

Lies.

Joe Biden:

I think it's hilarious.

Greg Knauss, from April 2000:

If you need some color in your life, look into fingerpaints.

Steven Poole:

Won't you please join me in declaring a War on Chrome?

Sebastian Anthony:

Bearded purists will be interested to hear that the Debian 6 kernel is, for the first time, completely free.

Josh Harris:

Everything is free, except the video that we capture of you. That we own.

Devlin Barrett:

Hackers have repeatedly penetrated the computer network of the company that runs the Nasdaq Stock Market during the past year, and federal investigators are trying to identify the perpetrators and their purpose.

James Verini:

The officer didn't know why Jonathan James and his companion, a man named Christopher Scott, were sitting in a car with laptops and a giant radio antenna, but she suspected they weren't playing World of Warcraft.

An exchange:

Someone once accused Craig Venter of playing God.

His reply was, "We're not playing."

Ralf-Philipp Weinmann:

I will demo how to use the auto-answer feature present in most phones to turn the telephone into a remote listening device.

Decius:

The unavoidable conclusion is that you are spying on me.

Mike Cardwell:

When you visit my website, I can automatically and silently determine if you're logged into Facebook, Twitter, GMail and Digg.

Video Professor:

Try my product!

Chris Palmer, EFF:

Web application providers undermine their business models when, by continuing to use HTTP, they enable a wide range of attackers anywhere on the internet to compromise users' information.

Keith Alexander:

The Internet is fragile.

Sherry Turkle:

A behaviour that has become typical may still express the problems that once caused us to see it as pathological.

Ben Johncock:

People are starting to suspect that the internet connives against us. It sells us the lie that it's better to click or flick in idle spare time than it is to read a book. But after half an hour -- after you've exhausted your regular websites and blogs, and everyone on Twitter and Facebook is in bed -- you get the same feeling as you do from eating chocolate all day.

Joseph Perla:

Facebook is a Ponzi Scheme.

Discover HIP HOP:

Discover Hip Hop is sweeping the nation!

Everyone else is doing it! Now you can too!!!!!

Get With The Program!

Robin Wauters:

Remember Firesheep?

I'm currently at the DLD Conference in Munich, Germany, which is host to a whole lot of tech luminaries, executives, startups, press and investors alike. The organization has provided every attendee with access to a public WiFi network dubbed DLDpublic, and lo and behold, looks like many of them haven't taken any measures to prevent the above-described hijacking from happening.

Next time you're at an event with an open WiFi network, you might want to consider using a secure VPN to connect to the Internet anyway -- you never know who's sniffing.

Alex Rice:

Starting today we'll provide you with the ability to experience Facebook entirely over HTTPS.

Dr. Walker Brown, the director of the Center for Canine Cognition:

It's entirely conceivable that a dog could learn simple computer functions. Word processing, e-mailing, even surfing the web: for many dogs, the future is already here.

Julia Young:

I'm getting older, and I'm not always gonna be around the house to explain stuff to you. I know you have a lot of questions, and I want us to be open with each other. So, I think it's time you learned where blogs and tweets come from.

When a person loves a funny video very much, he or she may want to share it with someone special to them. This is called linking and if done properly, it can bring people together in a very special union of love: usually the love of sneezing animals, or bed intruders, or Bill O'Reilly having a temper tantrum. But it's important to be sparing when you send your links. You don't want to become the neighborhood outbox, constantly forwarding yourself around. Nobody wants that kind of reputation.

Everyone tries Facebook at least once in their life. It usually starts in college.

I hope this wasn't too embarrassing for you. We'll talk about what a meme is when we get to Grandma's. I don't want to have to explain it twice.

Allie:

As a 13-year-old boy, Benny probably did not relish the idea of wasting an entire day entertaining us. But he was a good-natured young man, and he had agreed to help keep us out of trouble, so he reluctantly asked us what we wanted to play.

Us: "Wolf pack!"

Benny: "How do you play 'wolf pack'?"

Us: "We're the wolves and you're the deer. We close our eyes and count to twenty and you run away. Then we try to find you and catch you!"

Benny: "Okay. Where do you want to play?"

Us: "In the forest!"

Benny probably would have tried harder if he knew that losing the game involved so much biting. But he did not expect that the game would be so true to life. I'm sure it was quite painful for him, but that was a necessary casualty for the game to feel convincing and fun.

The psychological torment of waiting to be attacked was almost worse than the attacks themselves. We darted around in the shadows, snapping twigs and making strange growling noises. We sounded like tiny chainsaws.

Have you seen Teeth?

Decius on Wikipedia, in 2003:

I've found myself using this more and more recently.

Matthew Ingram:

Most people will never edit a Wikipedia page.

Jimmy Wales:

A lot of people are literally afraid.

Monster Supply Store:

The shop was established in 1818, and ever since then has served the daily needs of London's extensive monster community. Step inside, and you'll find a whole range of essential products for monsters. You can pick from a whole range of Tinned Fears, a selection of Human Preserves, and a variety of other really rather fine goods.

Chuck Klosterman:

What if contemporary people are less interested in seeing depictions of their unconscious fears and more attracted to allegories of how their day-to-day existence feels?

Chuck Klosterman:

It's a present-day problem: There's just no escaping the larger, omnipresent puzzle of "reality." Even when people read fiction, they want to know what's real. But this, it seems, is not Franzen's concern. He disintegrates the issue with one sentence.

"Here's the thing about inauthentic people," he says on the train, speaking in the abstract. "Inauthentic people are obsessed with authenticity."

Nick Smyth:

One of the pesky things about real life is that you cannot really "opt out" of the picture, choosing to view it from the sidelines passively. For this is itself a choice, a decision with character and consequence. In real life, there are no audiences, only actors.